GRADUATE COURSES IN FRENCH

Spring 2008

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

French 500
Proseminar
Prof. Prince
T 1:30-4:30

French 638 (COML 638, MUSIC 710)
Etymologies of Medieval Song
Prof. Brownlee and Prof.Dillon
M 2-5

This course will explore the main repertories of medieval lyric from the dual perspectives of words and music (and disciplinary perspectives of musicology and literary studies). Our focus will be vernacular song and poetry from the late thirteenth to early fifteenth centuries, including detailed exploration of some of the following: polytextual motet, music and poetry of Adam de la Halle, Nicole de Margival, the Roman de Fauvel, Guillaume de Machaut, Ciconia and some early Guillaume Dufay. In exploring how late thirteenth-century writers and composers defined themselves as part of a tradition, we will also look back to their ‘history’ – to the repertory of troubadour lyrics.

The course will place particular emphasis on the ways medieval writers and musicians construed their creations, and the many productive tensions between language and sound; singing and speaking; words and music. We will explore how that concern with etymologies of song played out not only in the lyrics themselves, but also in theoretical writing about song, and in its manuscript representation and codification. Included in our discussions will be writings by Johannes de Grocheio, Philippe de Vitry, Brunetto Latini and Eustache Deschamps, and consideration of a range of chansonniers, including the Chansonnier du roi, the Montpellier Codex, and the Machaut manuscripts.

The course is organized around four key themes, running roughly chronologically, and framing four models by which medieval poets and composers defined song. We will each lead one seminar around a given theme, with the idea of giving you two different takes on a topic. Readings will be geared towards a rich range of primary materials – literary, musical, theoretical, manuscripts ad so on. In addition, musically orientated weeks will include close readings of specific songs, hopefully with live performance. We will also assign a small selection of secondary readings each week, along with a fuller bibliography of recommended (but not mandatory) reading. These are intended to offer students fresh to either discipline some sense of the concerns and themes that shape our respective approaches to song. We will top and tail the semester with two jointly taught classes, intended to serve as workshops in what a collaborative engagement with song may look like.

French 640
Studies in Renaissance
Prof. Donaldson-Evans
M 4-6

French 660
The Novel of Seduction
Prof. DeJean
W 4-6

The 18 th-century novel has many sub-genres, most of which are present in all European traditions. One of them, however, was an exclusive preserve of the French tradition: the novel of seduction. ( Richardson is the closest the English novel comes to a novel of seduction: we may take a look at Pamela for a point of comparison.) The genre is also limited almost exclusively to the 18 th century and was practiced almost exclusively by male writers. We will look at the genre’s full history, beginning with early seduction novels, such as Manon Lescault and La Vie de Marianne, and end with what may be the genre’s final representative, Denon’s Point de lendemain. In between, we will read such classics as Crébillon’s Le Sofa and Laclos’ Liaisons dangereuses. We will develop a definition of the novel of seduction and try to understand its basic preoccupations –from the new vision of the city it promotes to its depiction of male-female relations. We will use the novel of seduction as an angle from which to view the history of the novel in the 18 th century and the various forms then developed – the epistolary novel, pseudo-memoirs, and so forth.

French 680
Studies in the 20 th Century
“Reading Georges Bataille Today?”
Prof. Richman
R 1:30-3:30

Georges Bataille holds a special place among the central literary and intellectual figures of the twentieth century. How to read this controversial polymath in relation to the formative interwar movements---especially surrealism---while respecting the specificity of his contribution to contemporary theory and criticism is the guiding question for our overview of his central works. Primary texts therefore will be compared with works by Breton and Leiris, as well as complemented by the readings proposed by Barthes, Foucault and Derrida and the current generation of readers.

Conducted in English; texts available in French. Primary texts on order include: Histoire de l’oeil ; Le Bleu du ciel, L’Expérience intérieure; La Littérature et le Mal; l’Age d’homme, Les manifestes du surréalisme, Le Collège de sociologie. A bulkpack will provide selected articles spanning Bataille’s career. Criticism will be placed on reserve.

French 690
Language Teaching and Learning
Prof. McMahon
W 1-3

French 690 is a course required of all Teaching Assistants in French, Italian, and Spanish in the second semester of their first year of teaching.   It is designed to provide instructors with the necessary practical support to carry out their teaching responsibilities effectively, and builds on the practicum meetings held during the first semester.  The course will also introduce students to various approaches to foreign language teaching as well as to current issues in second language acquisition.   Students who have already had a similar course at another institution may be exempted upon consultation with the instructor.